Crisis in the High School – Senior Hopes to Be Students’ Voice on School Board

By KATE BRAMSON Journal Staff Writer

Samuel A. Budway says he can represent fellow students in the school’s quest to retain its accreditation.

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JOHNSTON – Samuel A. Budway wants to set the record straight.

This Johnston High School senior doesn’t see eye-to-eye with the agency that is threatening to strip the school of its accreditation, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.

Budway believes that view is “diminishing” the school he calls his home. A self-described “Johnston boy born and raised,” Budway told the School Committee last week that he loses sleep over the possibility of a loss of accreditation.

“The education you get out of Johnston High School is unbelievable,” he said this week. “The teachers don’t just teach you their content, but how it applies to life.”

They tie subjects together by teaching students how content in their English classes relates to content in their history classes, he says. They assess students’ work in a variety of ways — recognizing that students learn in different ways.

“You can’t go into Johnston High School and say the teachers don’t care,” Budway said.

At 17, this student knows what he wants out of life.

He’s a student council representative for his class, president of the Students Against Dangerous Decisions (SADD) chapter at the school, a member of the National Honor Society and captain of the school’s golf team.

He’s ranked fourth in his class with a 3.8-grade-point average. He hopes to get a master’s degree in Arabic and in law and enter the world of foreign affairs.

But his current quest is to become a student liaison to the School Committee. He wants to share student views with the elected body that sets policy and guides the decisions of the School Department.

It began two years ago when the student council chose to focus more on student issues than social events, he says. Then last year, Budway and other students were upset over an administrative decision to change the photographer who takes senior-class portraits.

When Budway and three other student council members met with Assistant Supt. Kathryn M. Crowley to discuss that issue, Crowley was impressed by how well-prepared and well-spoken they were, she said yesterday.

Formerly a longtime administrator in Smithfield, Crowley told them that students in that community have acted as liaisons to the School Committee since the 1980s. She suggested that Johnston students have similar representation.

Budway jumped at the opportunity and followed up with Crowley at the beginning of this school year, she said.

On Tuesday, the School Committee plans to consider a request from Budway to become the student representative.

“I think Sam has a lot of presence, and I was won over by the fact that when he talked before the School Committee he said he is very invested in Johnston,” Crowley said. “He has grown up in Johnston. He is very happy with the education he received in Johnston and wants to give back, and I think that is very admirable for a young man.”

Budway attended most School Committee meetings last year, because of the student council’s push to be more involved.

“I was the one who helped spearhead this,” he said. “I really believed we need a voice. We’re not saying we’re unfairly represented, because we’re not.”

The students just want to speak their minds when issues affecting them come up, he says.

Budway said he knows the entire School Department is fighting to keep the school’s accreditation. He has seen the blistering report that NEASC issued in July. But he thinks NEASC hasn’t seen enough of the work the school is accomplishing.

Yes, there are things the school needs to work on, he says. But is it bad enough to lose its accreditation?

“Impossible,” he said. “We work too hard.”

He said the school needs to do a better job of documenting all that it does in NEASC’s show-cause process, which allows the district to dispute the agency’s recommendation. The district has until Dec. 1 to turn in a report detailing why it believes the school should remain accredited.

The July 18 NEASC report to high school principal Elizabeth L. Mantelli said the school should lose its accreditation because of its failure “to resolve significant, longstanding needs related to the [NEASC] standards for Accreditation on Curriculum, Assessment of Student Learning and School Resources for Learning as well as Leadership and Organization.”

The report said NEASC was “particularly troubled” to learn that the school had regressed in the area of leadership and organization. It said School Committee members, district administrators and building administrators are “incapable” of working together.

“Further, the professional culture of the school is not characterized by thoughtful, reflective and constructive discourse about teaching and learning, and there have not been efforts to bring together the various leaders to work towards achieving school improvement or improved relationships among the various constituents,” the report stated.

Budway says he can’t discuss ways the school could improve — not until, and if, he is selected as a delegate to the School Committee. At that point, he says he’ll share the student council’s opinion and plans for how it can help the situation.

Even though he has only one year left of school, Budway says he has a responsibility to make sure Johnston High School is accredited.

“When I leave, I don’t want anyone to say we didn’t do everything we could have done or that we didn’t give it our all,” he said.

Kate Bramson covers Johnston schools. She can be reached at (401) 277-7470 or by e-mail at kbramson@projo.com.